The present invention relates to a coin receiving and discharging apparatus equipped in a vending machine, a money exchanging machine, a money automatically-discharging machine, or the like, and particularly relates to a small-sized coin receiving and discharging apparatus having two coin cases for accepting coins, which are the same or different in kind from each other, and for selectively discharging the coins from the coin cases.
An apparatus provided with a plurality of coin tubes so as to selectively discharge coins from the coin tubes is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,690,332 and 4,121,603 issued on Sept. 12, 1972 and Oct. 24, 1978 respectively, and in Japanese Patent Post-examination Publication No. 57-19833 published on Apr. 24, 1982. In such a conventional apparatus, however, the coin tubes are disposed side by side in the left and right direction with respect to the front surface having a coin discharge opening. Accordingly, when the apparatus is installed in a place, a relatively wide use frontage is required in the place, while the depth of the place can not be effectively used when the place has much room in depth. Prior to the present invention, Osamu KOBAYASHI, one of the inventors of this application invented a coin discharging apparatus as described hereunder and disclosed the apparatus in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Post-examination Publication No. 57-19833. The apparatus according to the prior invention has a mechanism in which there are provided two coin tubes disposed side by side in the left and right direction, and a horizontally pivotally movable fan-shaped plate disposed under the lower ends of the coin tubes and having two coin accepting holes each for accepting one coin, whereby the plate is pivotally reciprocated by the operation of a solenoid so that the plate receives coins alternately from the coin tubes and succeedingly discharges the received coins through a single coin passing hole provided under the plate. However, the apparatus is configured such that the fan-shaped plate is horizontally pivotably moved over the two coin tubes disposed side by side in the left and right direction, and a large space is therefore required. Thus, the apparatus is disadvantageous in that not only the apparatus becomes large in size but in the case where the apparatus is mounted on the side surface of a coin selecting apparatus, a vending machine, or the like, having sufficient room particularly in depth, the depth of the coin selecting apparatus, the vending machine, or the like can not be used effectively.